...How Speicher was shot down remains less clear to this day. Initially, the Navy maintained that Speicher was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Corresponding reports appeared in print media throughout the 1990s.

This despite several pilots involved in the same mission where Speicher went down clearly recalling the appearance of an Iraqi air force MiG-25 interceptor around the time Speicher’s Hornet got hit — and despite Iraqi newspapers publishing several stories about the MiG.

In 2001, the CIA released an unclassified summary of a report attributing Speicher’s loss to an air-to-air missile fired by an Iraqi aircraft.

A cross-examination of recollections of Iraqi MiG-25 pilots and American participants and eyewitnesses reveals that the U.S. Navy easily could’ve lost three fighters that night. That this did not happen can foremost be attributed to the discipline of the Iraqi pilot in question.
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